Sacred Hearts By Sarah Dunant. Random House, 515 pp., $25.

Sunday, July 26, 2009

Ellen Emry Heltzel

The British writer Sarah Du nant arrived on the best-
seller scene several years back with "The Birth of
Venus," a novel about a young Florentine woman who
aspires to be an artist just as the Renaissance is taking
root. Her next book, "In the Company of the
Courtesan," spotlights a high-class prostitute
navigating the corruption and political intrigue of
16th-century Venice.

Now comes "Sacred Hearts," set in the same
period and featuring another woman bucking the tide of a
Machiavellian world. But the differences are striking: In
this book the profane yields to the sublime. And instead of
the evocative word pictures that distinguished the earlier
books, Dunant relies on a well-crafted plot.

The setting, a Benedictine order in Ferrara, is modeled on
a convent that still exists, and the narrative is built
around historical fact. With dowry inflation the bane of
Italy's noble families in the late 16th century,
convents became a convenient place to deposit excess or
wayward daughters. Serafina, the rebellious novitiate at the
center of "Sacred Hearts," personifies this
practice, along with the church's extraordinary power
to turn even reluctant recruits into obedient servants.

A 16-year-old singer from Milan, Serafina made the mistake
of falling in love with her music teacher. When her father
dispatches her to Santa Caterina, she arrives in such a rage
that Suora Zuana, who runs the convent's dispensary, is
called to sedate her.

"If I am to be buried alive, I should at least be
allowed to see the shape of my coffin," Serafina says,
provoking Zuana's admiration. She becomes the
girl's unwitting accomplice.

The cagey abbess, Madonna Chiara, is less naive about her newest charge. With the Counter Reformation bearing down on her community, she intends to use Serafina to her own ends while blocking her rival. Their fight both raises the stakes and shapes Serafina in ways that even the abbess didn't anticipate....

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